Emily Maitlis

Award-winning journalist and broadcaster Emily Maitlis is one of the most recognised faces on BBC television news and one of the top 50 most influential people in Britain (GQ Magazine). She also co-hosts the hugely respected podcast Americast, and was named the Network Presenter of the Year at the RTS Television Journalism Awards in 2019 and 2020.

Celebrated for her unique and inimitable style, with GQ Magazine saying “Don’t confuse her with: Andrew Neil. He grills; she incinerates”.

In 2019 Emily scooped a world exclusive no-holds-barred interview with Prince Andrew at Buckingham Palace who talked publicly for the first time about his relationship with the late American financier and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

This jaw-dropping interview was watched globally and widely regarded as an expert piece of journalism on her part, and a car crash interview on his. It won Emily another RTS Television Journalism Award for Interview of the Year and was named in The Times’ 10 Best TV Interviews.

Presenting the channel’s flagship daily current affairs programme Newsnight on BBC2, Emily is also anchor for the BBC’s main news bulletins on BBC1, plus the BBC News Channel and BBC World. She also works alongside David Dimbleby and Jeremy Vine covering all General, Local and US elections.

She has also interviewed major political figures including Donald Trump, Kofi Annan, Julian Assange, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Christine Lagarde and all seven of the most recent UK prime ministers.

Hugely respected for the integrity of her documentaries. The 2020 BBC film Taking Control: The Dominic Cummings Story examined the career of the Prime Minister’s Chief Adviser and ‘mastermind’ of the Vote Leave campaign to explore just how much political power lay with him.

She has previously presented Expenses: The Scandal That Changed Britain, which looked into the Parliamentary expenses scandal that rocked Westminster and the impact it had on public trust, and Inside Facebook: Zuckerberg’s $100 Billion Gamble – a BBC documentary which featured an exclusive television interview with the Facebook founder.

Not limiting herself to the world of politics, Emily has also interviewed key figures from the world of sport, entertainment and business such as David Beckham, Sir Michael Caine, the Dalai Lama, Juliette Binoche, Hugh Grant and George Soros - to name but a few.

Emily Maitlis was born in Canada, to British parents, but raised in Sheffield, South Yorkshire and she read English at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Prior to working in news, Emily was a documentary maker in Cambodia and China.

She worked for Sky News in the region and for 6 years at NBC based in Hong Kong, as a business correspondent, and then as a presenter covering lead stories such as the collapse of the tiger economies in 1997. She also covered the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong with Jon Snow for Channel 4. Emily then moved to Sky News in the UK as a business correspondent, and then to BBC London News when the programme was re-launched in 2001.

Emily’s book Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News was published in April 2019, giving a behind-the-scenes look at some of the biggest news stories and interviews of recent years it became a Sunday Times bestseller.

Emily Maitlis has written for a number of newspapers and magazines including GQ, The Sunday Times and the Spectator Magazine as well as the Guardian, Evening Standard and the New Statesman.

Emily speaks fluent French, Spanish and Italian, plus basic Mandarin. Off screen, she does a lot of work for charity, mainly with Action for Children and World Jewish Relief, as well as for Debate Mate and World Child.

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